|
A Bus Ride Through Nigerian Literature By Gimba Kakanda
As soon as our flight touched down at Port Harcourt International Airport, a chapter of my thoughts introduced me to the task ahead; representing the interest of emerging Nigerian writers, the Northern Nigerian writings and writings in Islamic lore at the first Bayelsa Book and Craft Fair (BBCF) coming up in Yenagoa. The minute-hand of my wristwatch was pacing to nine after meridian of this 24th day of March, the first of the three-day event. All through the 40-something minute flight, Richard Ugbede Ali who was also a participant from the North listened to the synoptic narration of my novel, which was about to be forwarded to him for editorial assistance. Later, he called the story saga, citing the recurring crazy events that strung the plots together. Every plot is graced with climax, Richard observed and quickly added that he doubted if such has been offered Nigerian literature. We ought to be five from the North but two participants were held back over what I perceived as interplay of ego over an approach by the young director of the fair, Onyeka Nwelue. But, their absence never weighed us down a gram for I believed in the third participant too, Binta Spikin whom a friend told me was up to the challenge.
And there was Dami, Dami Ajayi! It was at the Arrivals, standing beside the youngish lady that my memory turned up as Jumoke Verissimo- I told Richard of my intuition as we waited to fetch our bags. But since we had little trust on our memory, we held our words tightly in our mouth, just waiting for our bag … A fellow came on and nudged me playfully. Ah, typical Nigerian! Now I trusted my memory- Dami, the co-publisher of Saraba e-magazine. We have been friends on Facebook, even with Jumoke- the author of I am Memory, a poetry collection; her publisher, Ayodele Arigbabu, turned up when we were in circuit of introduction.
The Protocol Officer, a soft-spoken lady, eventually had us seated in a compartment at a structure in the airport, waiting for other participants some of whom were for the African Movie Academy Awards also coming up at Yenogoa. There I chanced upon some notable names: Deji Toye, an articulate critic and lawyer; Toyin Akinosho, a geologist, critic and CNN African Journalist of the Year, 2007; Sage Hasson, the maestro of Spoken Words whose performances have long been a pride to every follower of the entertainment industry; Mrs Mobolaji Adeunubi, a matronly participant, author of many books among which is Splendid, winner of the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Literature, 1995.
And there we were, filing out to the bus for the over-an-hour trip to the capital of Bayelsa state. The weather seemed depressed; humid but romantic on the skin, anyway! I loved the sickly glow of the sun of this land, far friendlier than the knifing scorch of the savannah sun I left not long ago (oh, yesterday) - the sun was still sleepy when we left Abuja. And the bus glided onward, at first with the gentleness of a quick millipede, and then, attracted by the vacuity of the road, the precious mobile machine plunged unto the exit of the airport. And that was when our chatters took a swerve to that dark sphere of indefinable shambles called Nigerian literature.
It was Dami’s remark on my rejoinder to the American-based Nigerian critic, Ikhide R. Ikheloa’s review of Ahmed Maiwada’s debut novel, Musdoki that sparked the first gallop on this plunge into Nigerian literature. It was agreed that the reviewer wrote some brilliant reviews but often had them wrong with overt opinions. And I complemented that it was his inability to corroborate his claims that despoils his critical opinions; no expose of a book gathers gullibility on peddling of adjectives. The reader’s intellect would be respected only if a critic who boasted that a book is ‘riddled’ does substantiate the claim with enough facts to fit the weight of the word ‘riddle’; presence of a few errors of grammar or syntax doesn’t beckon such careless conclusion. It was in the midst of this trend that Dami and Richard aptly concluded that criticism is dead in Nigeria. My concurrence was obvious, but I still edged Richard to resurrect it especially when he revealed his intention to have the great novels of the past decade critiqued. ‘Maybe someone can do Experiment in Literary Criticism: The Nigerian Example…’ I said with jocular tinge. ‘By Gimba Kakanda!’ Richard chided. An outburst of laughter. But I pulled that off me. It was actually intended as a clue for Richard. We laughed. And delved into the popular Nigerian novels; I chose Maik Nwosu as my favourite. Aside the mastery of other aspects of the novel, he’s the most quotable writer I’ve read in the country. I supported my choice. He is my best! Richard chose Biyi Bandele’s Burma Boy which, with Helon Habila’s two novels, is seated on the second position of my favourite. And Ben Okri was left out? Strange!
Richard praised Okri’s The Landscapes Within as his favourite of the London-based novelist. I gave the opinion that Okri’s novels in this century failed to measure up to his reputation, connecting my disgust to his In Arcadia and Starbook which forced me to define that in this century he writes like an uninspired griot forced to tell a story. His books read like textbooks. Philosophy textbooks. That was the reason why Okri missed the spot. But despite those thumb-downs, the novels are celebrations of linguistic excellence. In Arcadia, noticeably, is a classic of characterization. I told Richard of my fear for Okri when I encountered too many characters on the opening of the novel; that I feared that Okri couldn’t keep the creations in place. But he was lordly enough; he was a master of those aspects. Ah my townsman, Okri! But we aren’t sure who carries the primal grace between Helon and Bandele; Dami and I pointed that there is too much dose of drama in Bandele’s writings. Particularly I wrapped up that Bandele’s dialogues are masterpieces! But I gave that of elegant narration to Helon even though Richard argued that the influence of drama isn’t negatively present in Bandele’s Burma Boy. I remembered, back home, a friend of mine was wont to saying that Bandele is an unserious novelist; he quipped that after I gave him the playwright’s and novelist’s The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams. Richard’s love for Burma Boy isn’t news, Dami observed and, later on, made a remark on Richard’s review of another novelist’s work, Lola Shoneyin’s.
It stirred Richard to ask Jumoke, ‘What do you think of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives?’ ‘It’s okay,’ she mumbled, rather unenthusiastic. But we pestered her to say more than that! It was obviously elliptic. She was hesitant, and when she gave in, the revelation was applauded; Lola over-flogged polygamy, we agreed. Though Dami loved the exciting characters of the novel; everyone loves such odd characters.
It was Jumoke’s involvement that struck Chimamanda Adichie in our discourse. Of course she can never be cut out of the literary map of the country having written two important books, one of which unfortunately gave her away as a frontline propagandist. Richard pounced on an obvious mischief in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, highlighting the overt caricaturing of the Premier of the North, Sardauna, who was reported in the novel to have bleated like a goat, like Rex Lawson’s song, while pleading the Ibo-soldier, Nzeogwu, to spare his life! It was repeated a record four times! Obviously not a coincidence, Richard pointed out.
Richard’s sweep attracted Deji Toye who took side with Jumoke in confuting his. Jumoke inferred that character Olanna kicked against her kinsmen’s monkeying of the Northern leader. It only got noisier; and being the two talking northerners on the bus, we exposed Adichie’s tricky characterization in the second novel. Chimamanda created two Northerners- Abdulmalik and Mohammed- whose portrayal isn’t just lamentable but enough to throw a flammable nation to shreds; Abdulmalik, a neighbour and friend of lead character Olanna’s uncle (who has even given a pair of slippers to Olanna) is portrayed as cannibal that killed the relative and his family during the Kano Riot, while the relationship between Mohammed, a cavalier prince, and Olanna, is portrayed as tragedy because the Northerner is only after the ‘Easterner’s’ vagina.
I emphasized the worse depiction of Mohammed’s inhumanity as his package containing handkerchief, underwear, Lux soap, and chocolate sent to Olanna during the war, a dumbness that rings in his note to the ex-lover telling her of his who-the-fuck-cares-to know exploits in polo game and sister’s marriage; Half of a Yellow Sun seeks to say that North wasn’t affected by the Biafran war where the surviving intellectuals in the East died psychologically. Jumoke countered my dissension with Chimamanda’s romanticized East where an unschooled Ugwu wrote a revealing tome on the war.
Richard and I related the sufferings of our Northern families which the literatures of the south deliberately omit in our history. It stirred us to laugh over Ikhide’s execrating condemnation of Maiwada’s Musdoki on the parameter of propaganda whereas Chimamanda’s was applauded. That bespoke what I called the celebration of Ibo nationalism by our southern critics, and thereon endorsed Biyi Bandele’s Burma Boy as a masterpiece for all the propagandists in the fort of Nigerian literature with its fair introduction of Nigerians- Hausa, Yoruba, Tiv, Gwari and the warring British and Japanese- with no attempt at overdrawing the superiority of a particular ethnic group, country or race to the other.
Aside the unanimous concurrence that criticism is dead in Nigeria, none of our debates got to a deductive conclusion, except the footnoting of more issues like Jumoke’s dictum that, ‘Chimamanda has the power of language,’ in our attempt to compare the novelist to Helon Habila whose writings Richard and I considered more elegant, citing how much Habila’s characters in Measuring Time seemed to be our next-door neighbours in the North.
However, Richard demanded explanation on what Jumoke meant by ‘power of language,’ which wasn’t grasped by us. Dami viewed that Habila’s writings are laced with poetry and I averred that aside the first book which is half-done from the point-of-view of a poet-protagonist, elegance is the word for Measuring Time, and that- Habila may deny this- there is a serious dose of Hausa linguistic influence in Measuring Time which must have been why (perhaps translated to English) Dami considered the novel too poetic. Habila painted the North in English; what Chimamanda did in the occasional Ibo.
And the bus sped down the road. At intervals I paused to admire the greenery of this part of the world. Even in the air-conditioned bus, my passion for the humid weather of this land amuses. The bus stopped over for some of us to answer to nature; and when we got going, our chatters chronicled the adoption of the overly Ibo name Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie by the novelist. It was Richard’s observation actually, and he insisted that it was another stratagem to promote her Ibo-ness, to which Jumoke reacted that the name had been in use even while she was a medical student at UNN. Like the other arguments, this one too morphed into another discourse when Jumoke made reference to my choice of Nwosu as a favourite Nigerian novelist, that the American-based novelist is a maestro of language but that doesn’t make him the best. But in my heart, he is!
Despite our lamentable discourses and pontifications round and around the crevices of Nigerian literature, we still drove past the foreign literatures like when Dami Ajayi commended the British Booker prize-winner and author of comic novels from whose essay Dami quoted a truly memorable self-maxim: ‘Show me a novel that's not comic and I'll show you a novel that's not doing its job.’ Dami’s romance with the foreign literature is so pronounced in his discourses, so much that it is no wonder that he models his poetry after that of the legendary American-born English poet, T. S. Eliot. Richard cautioned him to pedal down on such obsession while commending an extract from his sequence of poems published in the e-magazine, Sentinel Nigeria, which Richard edits. He has done another in Saraba, influenced by Eliot’s ‘Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’
Our ideas galloped on and on, through the potholes of Nigerian literature; still, Bayelsa refused to stretch her landmass unto us. And when, after a perspiring anxiety, it did, I thanked my patience! Behold Bayelsa, come to us Yenagoa!
Gimba Kakanda Poet and author Safari Pants (Kraftgriot, 2010) |